The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (38 page)

century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means

schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became

slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.

The Sane Society (1955) ch. 9

6.53 David Frost =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1939-

Hello, good evening, and welcome.

Catch-phrase in "The Frost Programme" on BBC Television, 1966 onwards

Seriously, though, he's doing a grand job!

Catch-phrase in "That Was The Week That Was," on BBC Television, 1962-3

6.54 Robert Frost =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1874-1963

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The

figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure

is the same as for love.

Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into

being.

Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars--on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

Further Range (1936) "Desert Places"

I never dared be radical when young

For fear it would make me conservative when old.

Further Range (1936) "Precaution"

Never ask of money spent

Where the spender thinks it went.

Nobody was ever meant

To remember or invent

What he did with every cent.

Further Range (1936) "Hardship of Accounting"

I've given offence by saying that I'd as soon write free verse as play

tennis with the net down.

In Edward Lathem Interviews with Robert Frost (1966) p. 203

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee

And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

In the Clearing (1962) "Cluster of Faith"

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Mountain Interval (1916) "Road Not Taken"

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate wilfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Mountain Interval (1916) "Birches"

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favour fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

New Hampshire (1923) "Fire and Ice"

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

New Hampshire (1923) "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I shan't be gone long.--You come too.

North of Boston (1914) "The Pasture"

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it.

North of Boston (1914) "Mending Wall"

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

North of Boston (1914) "Mending Wall"

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

North of Boston (1914) "Mending Wall"

And nothing to look backward to with pride,

And nothing to look forward to with hope.

North of Boston (1914) "Death of the Hired Man"

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in."

"I should have called it

Something you somehow haven't to deserve."

North of Boston (1914) "Death of the Hired Man"

Most of the change we think we see in life

Is due to truths being in and out of favour.

North of Boston (1914) "Black Cottage"

Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.

He says the best way out is always through.

North of Boston (1914) "Servant to Servants"

I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets.

It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though:

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

North of Boston (1914) "Self-Seeker"

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in

interpretation.

In Louis Untermeyer Robert Frost: a Backward Look (1964) p. 18

Asked...whether he would define poetry as "escape" he answered hardily:

"No. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."

Elizabeth S. Sergeant Robert Frost: the Trial by Existence (1960) ch. 18

I have been one acquainted with the night.

West-Running Brook (1928) "Acquainted with the Night"

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Title of poem in Witness Tree (1942)

The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people.

Witness Tree (1942) "Gift Outright"

And were an epitaph to be my story

I'd have a short one ready for my own.

I would have written of me on my stone:

I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Witness Tree (1942) "Lesson for Today"

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Witness Tree (1942) "The Secret Sits"

6.55 Christopher Fry =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1907-

The dark is light enough.

Title of play (1954)

I travel light; as light,

That is, as a man can travel who will

Still carry his body around because

Of its sentimental value.

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 1

What after all

Is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 1

What is official

Is incontestable. It undercuts

The problematical world and sells us life

At a discount.

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 1

Where in this small-talking world can I find

A longitude with no platitude?

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3

The moon is nothing

But a circumambulating aphrodisiac

Divinely subsidized to provoke the world

Into a rising birth-rate.

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3

I hear

A gay modulating anguish, rather like music.

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3

The Great Bear is looking so geometrical

One would think that something or other could be proved.

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3

The best

Thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost in

Look as much like home as we can.

The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3

Try thinking of love, or something.

Amor vincit insomnia.

A Sleep of Prisoners (1951) p. 37

I hope

I've done nothing so monosyllabic as to cheat,

A spade is never so merely a spade as the word

Spade would imply.

Venus Observed (1950) act 2, sc. 1

I tell you,

Miss, I knows an undesirable character

When I see one; I've been one myself for years.

Venus Observed (1950) act 2, sc. 1

6.56 Roger Fry =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1866-1934

Mr Fry...brought out a screen upon which there was a picture of a circus.

The interviewer was puzzled by the long waists, bulging necks and short

legs of the figures. "But how much wit there is in those figures," said Mr

Fry. "Art is significant deformity."

Virginia Woolf Roger Fry (1940) ch. 8

Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.

In Virginia Woolf Roger Fry (1940) ch. 11

6.57 R. Buckminster Fuller =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1895-1983

Right now I am a passenger on space vehicle Earth zooming about the Sun at

60,000 miles per hour somewhere in the solar system.

In Gene Youngblood Expanded Cinema (1970) p. 24

Either war is obsolete or men are.

In New Yorker 8 Jan. 1966, p. 93

Here is God's purpose--

for God, to me, it seems,

is a verb

not a noun,

proper or improper.

No More Secondhand God (1963) p. 28 (poem written in 1940)

Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth,

and that is that no instruction book came with it.

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) ch. 4

6.58 Alfred Funke =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1869-?

Gott strafe England!

God punish England!

Schwert und Myrte (Sword and Myrtle, 1914) p. 78

6.59 Sir David Maxwell Fyfe =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1900-1967

See Lord Kilmuir (11.27)

6.60 Will Fyffe =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1885-1947

I belong to Glasgow

Dear Old Glasgow town!

But what's the matter wi' Glasgow?

For it's going round and round.

I'm only a common old working chap,

As anyone can see,

But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday,

Glasgow belongs to me.

I Belong to Glasgow (1920 song)

6.61 Rose Fyleman =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1877-1957

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!

Punch 23 May 1917 "Fairies"

7.0 G =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

7.1 Zsa Zsa Gabor (Sari Gabor) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1919-

You mean apart from my own?

When asked how many husbands she had had, in K. Edwards I Wish I'd Said

That (1976) p. 75

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.

In Newsweek 28 Mar. 1960, p. 89

I never hated a man enough to give him diamonds back.

In Observer 25 Aug. 1957

7.2 Norman Gaff =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

d. 1988

A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play.

Advertising slogan for Mars bar, circa 1960 onwards

7.3 Hugh Gaitskell =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1906-1963

I say this to you: we may lose the vote today [on retaining nuclear

weapons] and the result may deal this Party a grave blow. It may not be

possible to prevent it, but I think there are many of us who will not

accept that this blow need be mortal, who will not believe that such an

end is inevitable. There are some of us, Mr Chairman, who will fight and

fight and fight again to save the Party we love. We will fight and fight

and fight again to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our

Party with its great past may retain its glory and its greatness.

Speech at Labour Party Conference, 5 Oct. 1960, in Report of 59th Annual

Conference p. 201

It [a European federation] does mean, if this is the idea, the end of

Britain as an independent European state....It means the end of a thousand

years of history.

Speech at Labour Party Conference, 3 Oct. 1962, in Report of 61st Annual

Conference p. 159

7.4 J. K. Galbraith =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1908-

These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political

faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy

is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be

a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural

parable, the bland lead the bland.

Affluent Society (1958) ch. 1

Perhaps the thing most evident of all is how new and varied become the

problems we must ponder when we break the nexus with the work of Ricardo

and face the economics of affluence of the world in which we live. It is

easy to see why the conventional wisdom resists so stoutly such a change.

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to

put out on the troubled seas of thought.

Affluent Society (1958) ch. 11

In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of

private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of